JL 2: 12-18
Gospel Mt 6: 1-6, 16-18
As we begin our annual Lenten observance, I have to admit
that I have something of a love-hate relationship with Lent, and in particular
with Ash Wednesday. I love that it is the most “irreligious” (i.e., critical of
external religious practices) day in the liturgical calendar, the day that
spends the most energy on telling people not to take their ritual performance
as a mark of moral or spiritual perfection. As they are today, the readings are
always something about religion being about a change of heart and life, not
just about looking good: “rend your hearts, not your garments,” “don’t let
people see you fast or give alms or pray,” that kind of thing. Even more personally,
the words we hear when we receive the ashes cut right at my vain little heart: “Remember
that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.” Translation: Keep building
sandcastles, but remember that the tide is coming in.
Yet paradoxically, Ash Wednesday is the day on which our
churchgoing is most visible and on which we spend the most energy thinking
about ourselves. My more liturgically expert colleagues and friends tell me
that more people show up to church on Ash Wednesday than on any other day of
the year, even more than Easter and Christmas – and it isn’t even a holy day of
obligation. I can’t help but wonder if it is such a popular day because we are
wearing a sign of our church attendance right on our foreheads – precisely what
the readings warn us to beware…
Of course, we also spend an inordinate amount of mental energy on changing some pattern in our lives - giving up chocolate or caffeine or beer, doing
our pushups every morning, whatever - for the next month and a half. Here’s my
problem with that: we tend to think that the content of the discipline is less important than having a discipline. “What are you
giving up for Lent?” means that giving up SOMETHING is what matters, but
SOMETHING easily turns into ANYTHING. Except that the whole point of it, of any
of the religious things we do, is the coming of the reign of God, the
overcoming of everything that tears down the fullness of human life. That’s it.
So say the documents of Vatican II: “the Church has but one sole purpose – that
the Kingdom of God may come and the salvation of the human race be accomplished.”
(Gaudium et Spes 45) It isn’t just
that God likes it when we give things up; we are about the Kingdom of God, the
healing and restoration of a world that is torn apart by greed and indifference,
which means that WHAT we do matters.
This Lent, might our discipline be about something that
actually responds to a bleeding world? Instead of (or if you must, in addition
to) giving up something arbitrary, or doing something that just makes us feel
good about ourselves, this Lent is a good time to commit to learning more,
saying more, doing more about racism, classism, economic injustice, all the
things that destroy life - not just for the next forty days, but in ways that we can't -- won't -- take back after the season ends.
Patrick Cousins works in the Department of Campus Ministry.
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